Well it's close, but you gotta go with Bob on that one, at least Norm knows what he's squawking...errr, talking about.

Yea, but Norm thinks that everyone watching has a lathe, bench planer, biscuit joiner, drill press, band saw, 10,000 different types of router bits and of course a dove tail jig. Sheeesh. And his accent.....fuuuuuck

Damn, Thelonius is looking good there. My folks have had a hawk family nesting in one of their (or a neighbor's) trees for like the last 3 years now. Really cut down on the squirrel and rabbit population, I can say that. One time while mowing the lawn, my dad saw the basically drop out of the top of the tree (~100' oak), go straight down, wings pinned at its side, and then pull up about 5 or 10 feet before the ground, pluck a snake from the grass, and return to its nest. That's gotta be really fun, hawks must just love that.

On the other hand, I suggested my dad start wearing my Giro while mowing the lawn.

... One time while mowing the lawn, my dad saw the basically drop out of the top of the tree (~100' oak), go straight down, wings pinned at its side, and then pull up about 5 or 10 feet before the ground, pluck a snake from the grass, and return to its nest. That's gotta be really fun, hawks must just love that.

On the other hand, I suggested my dad start wearing my Giro while mowing the lawn.

Last college I worked at around Albany, NY, we had a red-tailed hawk that hung around the athletic fields. I would go out i the afternoons and he would be perched on top of one of the soccer goals or scoreboard and occasionally in some of the trees.

One day while sitting in the golf cart working a softball game I noticed him sitting in the stand of tree behing the first base line, maybe 25 yards from the field. All of the sudden he takes off, gains a little altitude and then proceeds to dive at the girl playing first base!!! He pulled up maybe 10 feet from her head. The girl, seeing this huge bird out of the corner of her eye diving at her, hit the deck as fast as I have ever seen, covering her head with her glove and arm while letting out a window rattling scream of terror. The whole game just sort of stopped while this was going on. very amuzing to watch. Although I'm not sure I would have acted any differently having a 20-30 lb raptor diving at me.

One other time I got to watch him make a kill. No softball players this time. He was perched on the scoreboard while a lax game was going on. And everyone is just kind of watching the hawk and not the game since we were getting spanked as usual. Again very suddenly and very powerfully takes off. This time flying on a strait line about 10-12 feet above the game for the whole length of the lax field and maybe another 75-100 yds picking up speed the whole way. At the last second you could see a squirrel make an unsuccessful run for it as the hawk hammers into the rodent talons first. After that he just kind of stood there on top of it until he was sure it was dead and then flew off with it.

Yea, but Norm thinks that everyone watching has a lathe, bench planer, biscuit joiner, drill press, band saw, 10,000 different types of router bits and of course a dove tail jig. Sheeesh.

You could have a router and 4 bits when you watch. PM me. Thelonious has dibs though, since he is a bad motherfucker.

My dad used to run every morning at 5:00 am-ish in the burbs where i grew up. on one long deserted stretch with canopy trees he would get dive-bombed by owls pretty regularly. he's bald and has a shiney head. they would come at him dead on, but they're silent and have pretty sick camo, so he wouldn't be able to pick them out until they were wicked close. then he would hit the deck. pretty funny picturing my bald dad chugging along by himself and getting bombed by owls. he got a kick out of it though. unfortunately, he already has a router.

he mentioned that Ill eagle had asked to borrow his router, but Thelonious, who has much more steady talons as he does not duffer from the motion sickness as much as Ill, suggested Illy just provide him with a good template of the counter top and Thelonious will just do the routing for him. He's a good bird.

When my parents first split, my dad moved in with some family friends, Dave, Sue, and their two dogs, Sam & Snicker. Anyhow, the house they lived in was somewhat of an architectural oddity -- a flat roof (WTF?) and windows everywhere, including 2 windows set in the corner of the house facing the woods and adjoining field. One afternoon, Sue for some reason decided to put a fake tree in the corner with the windows, where it was plainly visible from outside.

As time went on, Dave and my dad began to notice every so often they would hear a thump coming from the direction of that corner while watching TV. Being engineer, his first instinct was to solve the problem. After a half an hour of checking everything they could think of, they concluded that the two dogs were causing the noise when their wagging tails bumped the windows.

They stepped outside to join me on the deck and smoke some reds, satisfied that their engineer brains had saved the world yet again. Just as my dad lifted a match to his cig, a robin dove out of the trees and tracked right into the window and impacted. The robin hit the ground, followed by dad's cigarette, and both of them cracking up.

Instead of telling Sue to move the tree or put tape on the window, they tallied bird-window strikes by notching lines on the deck railing.

When Sue finally realized that the tree in front of the windows was causing the bird strikes, she moved it to a different corner of the room, and put the dogs' toys in the corner instead. That put a stop to the robin strikes.

Buuuuutttttt. Did I mention the dogs were small dogs?

That's when the hawks started nailing the window. Pure comedy, that was.